Joy did not walk down the staircase; she floated, as though matter had ceased to exist and the soul was free. She stood for a minute on the step looking out at the view; but presently kept changing her pose so that her face might be seen with both profiles, as well as the full face. If He had come there to see her He should not be disappointed—if she could help it.
That drive was a dream, an ecstasy. At first there was a miserable sense that each turn of the wheels took them farther apart; but shortly this was lost in the overwhelming sense of gladness. She could have sung—danced—shouted. She wanted some physical expression of her feeling. Then the excitement settled down to a quiet tingling happiness, a sense of peace which was ineffable and complete.
“… if that all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed
That tremble into thought as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast one intellectual breeze
At once the soul of each and God of all.”
So sung, a century before, a poet of that sweet cult of the school centred in the very area in which she moved; and if his thoughts were true there was a true act of worship that sunny afternoon on the rising hills beyond the lakehead. For happiness is not merely to be at rest. It is to be with God, to carry out to the full His wish that His children should appreciate and enjoy the powers and good things given them by His hands. And when that happiness is based on love—and there is no true happiness on aught that is not high—the love itself is of the soul and quivers with the flapping of its wings. Then indeed can we realize that marvellous promise of the words of the Master:
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Wordsworth and those who held with him saw God and worshipped Him in those myriad beauties of the lake they loved; and as the beauty and its immortal truth soothed and purified their souls, so was the spirit of the love-sick girl cleansed of all dross. How at such a time, when the soul swam free in grateful worship, was there place for anything that was not clean? Her father thought, as he looked at her and heard the ring of her voice, that he had never seen her look better or happier. She was full of spirits, gay, sweet, tender; and yet there was over her such a grace of gentle gravity that the old man felt himself saying to himself:
“My little girl is a woman!”